Got a quote of £12,000 to remove paint from house - do we actually need it removed? :/

blizeH

Hi, when we bought the house the survey flagged up that they had used the wrong paint on the exterior and that it needed to be removed and re-done. In places it's bubbling and in many places it's just straight up flaked off. We stupidly didn't get any quotes for this, and assumed at the most it'd be £2k or so, but we've just had a quote of £12k!

Obviously our next step will be to get other quotes, but are there other options we should be looking at? Like a particularly effective or cheaper way to remove the paint? Do we even need to remove everything? My wife has found a paint she'd like to use (Emperor) which comes with a 25 year guarantee, but we'd need a good starting place to qualify for that.

Thank you

gwynlas

You could get a number of quotes for sandblasting but that looks like it might be bad enough to be jet washed off. Doubt all will be removed unless sandblasted.

stuart45

If the paint is coming away from the wall there's no point painting over it.

FreeBear

gwynlas said:

You could get a number of quotes for sandblasting but that looks like it might be bad enough to be jet washed off. Doubt all will be removed unless sandblasted.

Sand blasting is highly destructive and will wreck a wall. There are gentler blasting media such as ground walnut shell and soda which might be suitable. Another method is to use a DOFF machine (high pressure/temperature steam cleaner) - That will get rid of the loose stuff and may remove the well adhered paint.

Personally, I'd try a jet wash on the lower part of the wall to see if the paint can be removed cheaply & effectively. If it doesn't come off, try some of the other methods until one works. Then get some scaffolding up to do the whole house.

Silvertabby

Is that all your house, or 2 semis (fence, different coloured drain pipes).

If so, any chance your neighbour would join in and have both houses re-painted?  

thegreenone

Silvertabby said:

Is that all your house, or 2 semis (fence, different coloured drain pipes).

If so, any chance your neighbour would join in and have both houses re-painted?  

Worth an ask?  I suspect a large part of that quote would be for scaffolding.

blizeH

Thanks for the replies everyone Will try a jet wash as my wife is keen to avoid sandblasting if possible.

And unfortunately it's not a semi - the fence is just an area for us to store our bins, and the white trunking is for our AC rather than a drain pipe.

theoretica

If you wash the paint off yourselves, how much less will the repainting come to - as that will still need scaffolding?  Or do you plan to DIY the painting too?

Kiran

The Doff cleaning suggested above will do it. I worked on a listed building restoration a couple of years ago and we got all the paint off using a Doff cleaner. We had to use some mild acid on some gloss paint that had been used but you don't have that issue. You'll probably need someone to do it for you but if you have fill access they may be able to work on a cherry picker for example to save on scaffold. If it doesn't come off with a Diff then it's probably safe to say it's on there and staying on so you can paint over it.

casper_gutman

If you'd had a similar quote for hacking the render off the entire house and starting again from scratch, I'd have thought it on the high side. But £12,000 seems insanely high for just removing the paint. I paid less than a third of that to have a fairly large semi-detached house repointed last year, including chasing out all the pointing and redoing in lime mortar, and also including £800 for a single lift of scaffolding all around.

Eldi_Dos

When you do get paint / coating taken off have precaution's in place to stop debris getting into your drains and causing problems later on.

It would be worthwhile masking off the a/c trunking and unit as well.